Clues to the Answers

"Terror is the anticipation of your own negative potential" — Joseph Brodsky

The normal patterns in our lives take on new meanings when understood from the point of view of Reflection. For example, if our reality perfectly reflects our inner self, then why do we have the emotional reactions we do to events in our lives? Why are we sometimes afraid and what are we afraid of? What do the controls we try to put on our lives mean? What are lies, the truth and love?

This chapter follows the implications of Reflection in exploring the answers to these and similar questions.

Anger

Anger looks different in light of Reflection. In the story of Mary interrupting my work, I was angry at Mary. Anybody looking at the situation would clearly see Mary interrupting me and assume my anger at her was justified. It's true I was angry at Mary, but Mary and her actions were a reflection of my inner self. Her interruptions reflected my inner conflict. My anger was really at the disharmony within myself, not Mary. Mary was the messenger in my reality telling me of my internal state that I was trying to ignore. Her behavior reflected my dissatisfaction with the "shoulds" driving my work.

This is a general pattern. When there is a disharmony within us, it is reflected in a disharmony in our reality. We are angry at the inner turmoil but do not express that anger at our selves. Instead, that turmoil is reflected externally and there we can freely express our anger at it.

For example, I was driving home after midnight one night when there was little or no traffic on the road. I came to a red light on the four lane road (two each way) I was on and stopped. I felt a little ridiculous stopped at the red light when there was no traffic in either direction, but there I was. Then another car pulled up alongside, the driver looked both ways, and continued ahead through the red light.

I was furious at him—but he had done nothing dangerous, nor had he done anything to harm or even inconvenience me. Why was I so angry? I was angry at myself. I was inhibited. My own life force was held in abeyance by a light that was red in the middle of the night. Stopping at red lights makes sense at a busy intersection, but not when there is no traffic. To mindlessly follow the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law leaves one spiritually dead. I was angry at my own fear to freely go through the light. The other driver's appearance, just as I was wrestling with my own inhibition, was a perfect reflection of my desire to be free. My anger at him was my anger at my own inability to be free.

Fear and Worry

If our reality is a perfect reflection of our inner needs, then you might think there is nothing to fear. In one sense this is true, but it is more often the case that it is exactly the intuitive knowledge of Reflection that causes fear. The fears, then, are well founded and related to a sense of an inner need that is in conflict with an external want.

Fears based on inner conflicts happen all the time. For example, worry about not getting a good raise probably reflects a sense that the raise isn't deserved. Fears of muggings might reflect feelings of vulnerability.

The existence of a fear doesn't mean it will come about, although it might. It means that reality includes the emotion of fear which is reflecting the inner self.

It is important to understand that, like external reality, inner self is complex and sometimes contradictory. The best example of this is the common love-hate relationship that often develops between people who are emotionally close to each other. If love-hate is in your inner self, then you can expect a reality that includes touching and warm moments intermixed with painful fights. Together they perfectly reflect the inner love-hate.

It is common to worry about the death of a loved one, one reflection of love-hate inside. While we might have strong needs for the loved one we might also feel trapped and need to escape. These trapped feelings are a need that can be fulfilled by the death of the loved one. Because the conscious outer self is more likely aligned with the love part of the inner self and denies the hate part, the sensing of the reality that might be reflected by the hate part causes the fear.

Fear, like anger, reveals a disharmony between inner needs and outer wants.

Guilt

Reflection implies that we are, in one sense, always guilty for everything that happens and, in another sense, never guilty. That is, because everything is a reflection, we are in a sense responsible, and if the reality is bad that makes us guilty. On the other hand, everything that happens is also a perfect reflection of the inner self of the others involved as well, meaning we are not guilty. So, it makes perfect sense that we might feel bad or guilty about a given reality, but we are answerable only to ourselves.

Consider the extreme case of the death of a loved one. It is very common for someone to feel guilty, as if it were their fault. Common wisdom says these people should be consoled and told it is not their fault, but for those involved, this advice rarely rings true. This is because the guilt is real and results from awareness of the inner need to have the loved one die. Others seeing the guilt do not see the deeper inner needs behind it, and so they console by saying "it is not your fault." This is really advice to cover up the painful truth inside, and adopt a policy of self deception.

It is much more freeing to let the inner truth out, to talk about the need to have the loved one die. Confessing the inner most feelings releases them. Further, they are forgiven because the loved one needed to die as well.

We are all at some point ready to move on, and those around us are ready to let us go. There is nothing wrong with that. Real release for the living comes from fully accepting this part of us that is reflected in other's deaths, and also realizing that just as surely, the deceased were ready to go.

It is also important to know that just as we needed that person to die now, that is now. For that person's life we needed that person to live. Our needs change. What was during the person's life is different. All involved are going through changes. For the loved one it was death. For the others it is a new life without the loved one.

The only ones who seem to really understand the real sense of guilt over death are the funeral homes. They offer relief from the guilt through the penance of spending large sums of money in fitting memorials and services.

The same covering up of the source of feelings of guilt applies to children in divorce. The children often feel guilty about their parent's divorce. There is a reason they feel responsible for their parents divorce—they sense their link to reality; they are not crazy. Yet counseling often advises them they are not to blame. This advice directly attempts to sever the connection with reality the child feels.

They need to come to grips with their own involvement in the divorce, and then understand that the divorce is a perfect reflection of the parents as well. This is the problem with the arithmetic of blame discussed earlier. We know the parents are responsible for the split so we cannot believe the children are responsible. If we accept Reflection then we can all probe within ourselves and express our full responsibility. The children are responsible and should explore it, but they do not need to feel guilty, because the parents needed it as well.

Criticism

Reflection applies to the communication we hear—asking why makes sense here as well. Why did I need to say that? Why did I need to hear that?

The criticisms we hear are often reflections of our own inner doubts. We might fight with them or accept them—but either way they are part of our reality. Mary criticized me for not fighting in the divorce as much as I could, she pushed me into fighting more—but this was my reality. I was angry at my ex-wife and wanted to fight but was afraid to fight. Mary's criticisms picked up that conflict within me.

Arguments

Arguments between two people can show exactly how connected the two people are, and how each point of view reflects the other's inner self. This is illustrated by Mary's and mine ongoing debate about marriage.

She wants to get married and I don't. She claims it is only right for us to acknowledge each other as man and wife, to agree to make a commitment to our relationship, and to stand up and be proud of that relationship. I claim marriage is an attempt to preserve the status quo and the fact that we are in love today is more than anyone can ask and better than what most have. I claim we do not need the institution of marriage to prove our love, and based on my experience of two divorces know that marriage does not secure one from separation.

This is an emotional debate for us, but if we both stop and become really honest with each other, it turns out the debate is almost the inverse of what it appears. I yearn for the stability, love and respect of marriage—Mary fears the commitment and ties.

Even though we try, I'm not sure either of us fully understands the twists and turns we each take on this issue as we dig deeper and deeper inside. When I am feeling close to a married state, Mary pulls away; when she is feeling close, I pull away. Both our fears and desires for the ideals of a couple are reflected in our own and each other's arguments.

I deny my desire for marriage through my arguments against it, Mary denies her fear of marriage through her arguments for it. Within each of us is the seeds of the other's arguments.

(We've since gotten married.)

Victims

The topic of "victims" is heavily debated today. There are those who fight strongly for "victims" rights, and those who feel that in fact the "victims" might have brought their fate on themselves. The debate brings out strong emotional feelings on both sides.

The problem is again one of understanding the arithmetic of blame. Both sides see the truth in their position, but each believes that it is not possible for the other side to be true as well. If the "victims" brought it on themselves, then the "perpetuators" are not to "blame." If it is all the "perpetuators" fault then the "victims" must be totally blameless.

Understanding Reflection, the need for debate disappears. The "perpetuator" is fully responsibility and the "victim" is fully responsible. Both sides are right and neither gets "off the hook" because of the other's responsibility.

Just reading the papers and watching the TV news shows how popular the pure victim myth is. We all love a story of, for example, an athletic competitor stopped in his/her prime by some accident, or the story of someone who had it all and lost it. To even imply that these people's realities are reflections of their inner selves is threatening to our own self images.

A story in the papers, as I write this book, illustrates this. It is the Stuart case. As originally told, the Stuarts were an ideal couple, who had the American dream, attacked in their prime by a random vicious assailant. He left the pregnant woman dead, the baby with enough life to be born and die, and the husband critically wounded. This is exactly how we like to believe the world works.

But in this case, the other side of the story came out. It appears there was no assailant and that the husband did it and later killed himself. Further investigation into their relationship shows life in paradise was more like life in hell. He was never home. He was avoiding her and looking for a way to get rid of her. She saw the baby not as a child of love but as a device for keeping her husband closer to home. Yet both were projecting the image of the good life, which the media and the rest of us swallowed completely—because if random bad things could happen to them, then they could happen to us and we wouldn't have to admit our own links to our own realities.

Other's Lives

Even when we begin to see Reflection working in our own lives, it is much harder to see how it works in anyone else's. This is partially because it is very difficult to put yourself in another's shoes. Because their inner-self is different from yours, you cannot see how they relate to their reality.

Further, we all hide the truth of Reflection from other's eyes as well as our own. In the stories I have told I have tried to show the truth as I now see it, but anyone knowing me at the time of the stories would have probably heard different versions that didn't indicate how much my messed up reality was really a reflection of my own inner self.

My bike racing friends thought my yeast infection was bad luck, my salesmen friends thought my firing was bad luck, and my closer friends have pity on me for my bad luck with women. They have all heard the stories the way I wanted to tell them, not how they really were. So these people, if looking for evidence of Reflection, would not have found it in my life.

This is true for all of us, and it is for this reason that the best place to look for Reflection is within. However, once seeing how much it works within, then it becomes easier to see it working in other's lives as well. In particular, it is easiest to understand other's whose realities are similar to yours.

For example, I met a woman who was taking Yoga to help cure her severe back problems. The problems started after she had left her husband. In a separate conversation she told of severe allergies that miraculously cleared up on leaving her husband.

While she was telling a story of a woman struck by random diseases, her reality was telling a story of someone smothered by her mate, not able to assert herself and expressing it through allergies. Leaving the marriage provided the inner freedom that removed the need for allergies, but added the fear of having to make it on her own—reflected in the backaches.

For me, this view evokes a level of compassion that goes well beyond that which would be felt for someone who was just the victim of random ailments. Here we see a human being struggling against inner weaknesses to make it in the world. Hiding behind her brave front I see myself and feel her pain.

Humor

Everything said in jest comes from some part of us. It can be taken literally. The reason humor is such a potent way of communicating is it lets us express inner feelings without threatening the self-image. It is just a joke, so it is not really us.

But because it is the truth, it feels good. It evokes a physical reaction, the shaking of our chest cavity, explosive sounds, tears—a relaxation of tension in the areas we often keep sealed up.

Those who can laugh at anything, can tell the truth about anything. I remember a funeral for someone I respected and liked. I was there with most of his family at the wake and someone started joking. What should have been somber was very funny, but the laughter let us touch the true emotions we all felt.

Fiction

Stories that capture the interconnections between us all are more interesting that those that don't. The interconnections can be captured symbolically, as in ancient myths, or modern ones with interconnected characters like Luke and Darth Vader in Star Wars, or Batman and the Joker.

The interactions can also be captured in more complex characters. When the good guys reflect the bad guys, and the bad guys reflect the good guys, and the distinctions are not always clear, you have a story with real human interest. When the Israeli Nazi hunter is driven by his own dark forces the story becomes more interesting.

Lonesome Dove, for example, was an enjoyable book for these reasons. The interplay between the main characters showed the need each had for the other. The other characters also fit the same pattern. They did not exist in a vacuum. In general each made sense as part of some other character's reality.

In addition to people interactions, interactions with events and surroundings make an interesting story. Great fiction writers understand this, and create characters that shape and are shaped by their circumstances. Gone With the Wind is a classic in this vein, with Rhett, Scarlett, and the Civil War all interconnected.

Any of William Kennedy's novels also show this interaction. Legs clearly shows the web between the lawyer, Legs Diamond, and prohibition. The lawyer needs the excitement of Legs. Legs needs the stability of the lawyer. Both interact with the events that shape them.

Stories, whether on film or in print, that do not have this sense of Reflection do not grab us as strongly. When a bad fate befalls some good character for no good reason, then the story fails to have the same impact as when we can see the connections between the protagonists.

Justice

The difficulty with Reflection and justice has to do with the arithmetic of blame. Our justice system tries to find out who is guilty and metes out punishment accordingly. With this system it is not possible to assume the victim is responsible because then the perpetuator of the crime would be innocent.

But Reflection does not destroy our criminal justice system. By understanding the victim and the criminal are both one hundred percent responsible we can console and help the victim understand, and at the same time try the perpetuator as fully one hundred percent accountable for his or her actions. No matter how obvious it is that the crime filled some inner need of the victim, the criminal still is responsible.

What's more the fact that the criminal is caught fills an inner need in the criminal, such as the need to be punished or the need to have society, through jail, relieve the criminal from responsibility for day-to-day life. The web goes further, for those who punish the criminal also are having inner needs met.

The entire reality of the criminal justice system fills the inner-needs of all those participating, as well as the inner-needs of those watching.

Laws

Laws reflect the needs of individuals. We make laws that describe our behavior—we do not behave in a certain way because of the laws. For example, the reasons we don't murder each other is not because its against the law, but because we do not in general want to murder each other. However, we create laws against murder because we recognize a part of us that does need murder. That part of us is reflected in the murderers that do exist. We punish them to reflect our distaste at that part of ourselves. They, on the other hand, need to be punished because of their guilt.

The laws do not prevent crime. The wilding punks who attacked the jogger in Central Park were caught and will be punished, but there have been many subsequent cases of wilding in New York that are totally unsolved. It is all part of the reality of those involved.

The laws are there for those that need to be punished and for those that need to punish, which is part of all our realities. The laws are not there for protection.

The only thing that really protects one is an inner need not to be the victim of crime. The world is more or less violent based on the needs of the people living in it. That reality changes from person to person.

This is the reason politics and law are so complex and yet so ineffective. They are attempting to define and distribute blame, and enforce levels of protection and security that an understanding of Reflection implies is impossible.

Health Care

It is often the case that we feel ashamed of our ailments. This sense of shame, when it exists, comes from the intuitive sense that the disease is indeed a reflection of some inner turmoil we would rather have hidden.

What we want to do is hide that sense of shame, and this is a major service that the medical profession provides. By presenting mechanistic explanations of disease, doctors allow us to avoid looking at the inner needs, but I do not believe they are very successful. The few general practitioners I know express frustration that they can do very little for the majority of their patients.

And this is the way we need it to be. The common cold fills a tremendous need for escape in our stressful world. An employee cannot miss work nor a student school without a disease as an excuse, and a cold is the minimal disease required. Until that need goes away I doubt doctors will find a cure for the cold.

The medical profession could be of far greater service if it worked with an understanding of Reflection. Doctors could bring all their technology to bear on illness but still encourage the patient to look within. They could ease the pain, fix what's broken, and at the same time steer us towards a real understanding of our inner selves.

Doctors, lawyers, and insurance companies are the price we pay for not understanding Reflection. Doctors try to externally manipulate our bodies, lawyers work to fix the blame and fault, and insurance companies get rich as we try to protect ourselves against the unknowns of our lives.

Beauty

An old saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is obviously true but yet seems to be totally disregarded today. The way someone visually appears to you is an exact reflection of how you feel about that person.

Our bodies are part of our reality reflecting who we are, and as such our bodies will be attractive to those who are attracted to us. Absolute ideas of beauty have nothing to do with attractiveness.

While waiting in line at the supermarket I noticed a Cosmopolitan article titled "Plain Women Who Get Men—What Have They Got?" The tone of the title struck me as funny. The whole premise of the magazine, that with proper dieting, makeup, exercise, and clothing you can make yourself attractive, is laid to question by these plain women who get men. But getting men has everything to with what's inside and nothing to do with what's outside.

This is another area where our society continues to help in the spread of lies to cover up inner feelings of inadequacy. It is much easier to blame a lack of popularity on a physical trait and say you are working on being more popular by changing the way you look. It is much more difficult to take full responsibility for your relationships and ask yourself why.

Maybe the best way to fully grasp this idea is to look at those in the later years of their lives. With our emphasis on perfect youthful bodies nobody over seventy qualifies as "beautiful," but some old people are very pleasing to look at and others are not. We are quick to understand with the old why this is so. We talk of a friendly old man, a gentle woman, and an understanding face. We also talk of bitter old men and crotchety old ladies. These descriptions are of both how the person is and how they look. We recognize that the energy flowing through them is related to their appearance and it is our reaction to that energy that makes them appear either beautiful or ugly.

The same is true when we are young.

Commitment

It is not clear that one can ever promise commitment to anything but attempts at complete honesty. To commit to a job or relationship does not really mean much. The commitment can always be broken. In fact, if the situation does not fit the inner needs, then the commitment will some way be broken or distorted, like it or not. To force oneself to stay in a situation that is not in harmony is to live a lie. Living a lie provides no service for anyone.

On the other hand, if total honesty were the commitment, then there would not be a problem. If two people were comfortable with each other, and could be totally honest then there would be no need for the false security of commitment.

There is no need to worry about a relationship breaking. If you worry about the other leaving, then that is an indication that some part of you needs that person to leave—probably not a part you would like to acknowledge, but definitely there. It does not need to be denied, however, because that fear will be reflected one hundred percent in the other's needs as well.

We all change all of the time. It is trying to hold the status quo as we change that causes much of the difficulty in life. Acceptance of this constant change seems to be a key factor in long successful marriages, where the couples often say the one long marriage was really more like a series of different shorter marriages, just with the same two people. Only honest and open communication can let those changes occur.

Lies

Lies are at the core of most difficulties in life. We lie to ourselves in defending our wants over our needs. We are afraid to talk of our inner needs and so we lie.

We are uncomfortable expressing negative feelings but by holding them in we are lying. We are sometimes embarrassed by positive feelings and hold them in, again a lie.

There are many lies told all the time to cover up the truth. I doubt it is possible for a human to live a life without lies, but it is possible to become more truthful than we are. The scary part about Reflection is it indicates our realities expose our lies.

Honesty

It is commonly recognized that a lack of communication is often the source of problems between people, but even when people talk, the words are often meaningless. This is because most talking is aimed at protecting self-images and is therefor not honest.

For example, there was a time when Mary and I were slipping into old patterns. I was feeling trapped and pressured to be more in love than I felt. I was feeling the urge to get out. Mary was acting loving and that made it worse.

Mary pushed us to talk as we have before, but as we talked about how we missed the closeness we were still distant. The words meant nothing. We were both acting close, pretending we were in love but not feeling it.

Then it started to come out. In fact Mary was thinking I was a bit wimpish, she was losing respect for me and was fantasizing about establishing a relationship with someone younger—build a family. The love she was professing for me was not real. It was a cover up for what she was really feeling. She was pretending because of her fear of the truth inside her.

I told her my fantasies of getting out, how I felt trapped, how I wanted to escape, and how I wasn't feeling good about her. Once we had both spoken the truth within and confessed the lies about pretend love we no longer had to pretend. We were very comfortable with each other and became very close again.

Complete honesty is possible if you believe in Reflection. It is all right to tell someone how you honestly feel because those feelings reflect some inner need in them as well.

Love

What is love? Love is the ability to completely accept someone as they are. Love is to know someone beneath the lies. Someone who loves you is someone whom you feel safe with. You can be completely relaxed around someone who loves you. You can accept any behavior between yourself and the loved one. This type of true love sets each person free. This type of true love means either can do anything they want, knowing it fits perfectly with the other's needs and is lovingly accepted.

This is the type of love that ideally happens between parent and child—total acceptance of each other despite the faults.

It is the love between lovers, who are completely open with each other, in the early parts of their relationship. There is nothing to lose in the beginning of a relationship, enabling each to express their inner selves and accept each other.

A couple that can maintain that openness can maintain the love. Unfortunately it becomes much more difficult as the inner selves of each change. Both have expressed themselves at one stage in their lives and are afraid of admitting to change for fear of upsetting the relationship. Both fell in love because of the perfect reflections revealed to each other, but as each changes they fail to understand the other is also changing in harmonious ways. Continuing honesty would continuously reveal the perfect reflections.

From love between individuals Reflection points the way to larger and larger circles of love. Someone who can accept and understand many different types of people as they are is someone who can love large numbers of people. This is the message of universal love presented in some religions. It is also the key to the success of Mr. Rogers' children's TV show. He tells the kids he likes them just the way they are. It is exactly what they need to hear.

Copyright ©1992 Dennis Merritt. All Rights Reserved.